How to delete screenshots on iPhone in bulk
Screenshots are the quiet clutter of a photo library. One tap saves a recipe, a boarding pass, a map or a chat, and a year later you have thousands of them. Most were useful for a day. A few still matter. This guide shows how to remove the ones you do not need in bulk, and how to avoid deleting the one with the Wi-Fi password you were saving.
Find all your screenshots in one place
Photos keeps screenshots in their own album. Open Photos and tap Albums. Scroll down to Media Types and tap Screenshots.
Everything you captured is here, with the newest at the bottom. The album is a view of the same photos in your library, so deleting from it deletes the actual screenshot.
Delete many screenshots with Photos
- Open the Screenshots album.
- Tap Select in the top corner.
- Tap a screenshot, then drag your finger across the neighbors to select several in a sweep. You can also tap them one at a time.
- Tap the trash button and confirm.
Dragging is much faster than tapping, and you can scroll while holding, so a long run of old screenshots goes in a few moments. If you want to keep a few from a stretch, tap them again to deselect before you delete.
Deleted screenshots go to Recently Deleted, not into nothing. They stay there for up to 30 days. Storage is freed when they leave that album. If you want the space now, you can open Photos, Albums, Recently Deleted, tap Select and Delete All, but only when you are certain.
Look before you delete
The trouble with a screenshot album is that useful and useless items look identical in a thumbnail grid. Before a mass deletion, scan for:
- Tickets, boarding passes and QR codes you still need.
- Receipts and order numbers, especially for warranties or returns.
- Codes, addresses and account details that you have not saved anywhere else.
- Conversations you want to remember.
- Recipes, directions and notes.
If something is worth keeping, move it to where it belongs. Save a ticket to Wallet, an address to Contacts, a recipe to Notes. Or mark the screenshot as a favorite so that it is easy to spot. Then delete the rest with a clear conscience.
How Poofora reviews screenshots
Poofora finds the screenshots in your library and lists them so you can go through them in one place. You mark the ones you want gone, and they wait on the Review screen. Nothing is deleted until you tap Delete, confirm, and then confirm again in iOS.
Two optional tools make it less of a guessing game.
Screenshot Brain. If you tap “Read my screenshots,” Poofora reads the text, labels and barcode types in your screenshots on your iPhone. It sorts them into groups such as receipts, tickets, chats, recipes, QR codes and maps, and lets you search for a word that appears in them. This all happens on the device. For barcodes, it keeps the type but never what the barcode says. You can erase the saved text and your recent searches at any time on the Screenshot Brain screen. Screenshot text can include private information, so the index stays on your iPhone and is not included in device backups. Searching across all your screenshots is part of Poofora Premium.
Smaller screenshots. Instead of deleting, Poofora can save a smaller HEIC copy of each PNG screenshot, with the same pixels and the same date. Your original stays until you confirm deleting it, so you can compare and decide. This is useful for screenshots that you do want to keep but that take more room than they need to. Items that exist only in iCloud are skipped, since Poofora never downloads them for this.
Stop the pile from growing back
A small habit change helps more than cleaning ever does. After you take a screenshot, iOS shows a thumbnail in the corner. Tap it and then tap Done, and you get a few choices, including Save to Photos, Save to Files, Delete Screenshot, and Copy and Delete. If you only needed the screenshot to paste somewhere, Copy and Delete puts it on the clipboard and never saves it. If you want to keep it as a file, saving to Files keeps it out of your photo library.
What about the space?
Screenshots are small one by one, but thousands of them add up. How much you get back depends entirely on your library, and we do not promise a number. Poofora shows sizes as estimates, and the real figure arrives when the photos leave Recently Deleted. You can check the result in Settings, General, iPhone Storage.
If you use iCloud Photos
Your screenshots sync like any other photo. Deleting one on the iPhone removes it from your other devices and from iCloud, after the 30 days in Recently Deleted. If a screenshot is the only copy of something you need, save it somewhere else first. This guide explains what happens to deleted photos and iCloud in more detail.
A routine that works
- Open Screenshots in Photos or in Poofora.
- Skim from newest to oldest and look for anything you need.
- Save or favorite the keepers.
- Select the rest, delete, and confirm.
- Look at Recently Deleted a few days later and empty it when you are sure.
Once a month is enough for most people. For other kinds of clutter, see how to free up storage on iPhone and how to find and delete duplicate photos. Poofora is coming soon to the App Store; the home page shows the features.